The wolves had picked exceptionally awful timing to plot an attack on the city. Lately, the Pard and the Sault were kinda sorta linked, with Ben and Elizabeth and Collin and Rin being four peas and all that. Her brother was technically Court now, but that didn’t mean he’d ever really turned his back on the Group he’d been dedicated to since he left home. And, the hush hush of it was that he and Shiloh had been working on terms to have him tke the Pard over completely - as acting Raj. So, the Sault had been all hands on deck with the leopard clean up the night the wolves hit the Pard.

There were more bodies than she’d been expecting to see, and even weeks later, sometimes the images played across the backs of her lids when she closed her eyes. Her first moon was the night after the vampires cleansed the area, so to speak. She was officially a Jaguar. Beast and all.

She was lying flat on her back, in the center of the living room at the Sault house, in her extra comfy sweats. It felt like she could hear everything when she closed her eyes. She could smell everything, too, even Jon coming inside from the driveway. “Hey, Temp!” She called from her place on the floor, not opening her eyes yet. She’d bestowed the nickname upon him through years of modification. First Shirley, then Temple, and now Temp. Nicknames were her thing. And the family had just learned to deal with it.

If she'd been a more seasoned jag, the scent of the saliva would have registered, and the reflexes she learned through training and had since acquired with the lycanthrope enhancements, she would have rolled in time to avoid the spit that fell from his mouth and hit just below her left nostril.

Unfortunately, she was still a shifter-n00b.

“EW. Ew, ew, ew. You bastard.” She wiped her face frantically and whipped an arm back to grasp his ankle. She was intent on sending him toppling down next to her, so she yanked as hard as she could, which was pretty darn hard – n00b or not.

He went down, but he was laughing as he hit the floor. "Jesus Christ, Brat, I gave you all the time in the world to move. You have supahspeed now, try using it, huh?"

He sat up and rubbed at the back of his head, reaching for the can of coke he'd dropped and holding the top of it toward her as he popped the tab. It was her fault it had shaken up after all. Luckily for her, it only fizzled a little extra. "Crap," he sighed, "Foiled again.

She burst out laughing right along with him, rolling onto her belly to rest her hands on his thigh, and her chin on top of those. "I'm workin' on it." Jon was familiar, and his cat stronger than her own, it felt even better than usual to snuggle up with her brother-by-default. Boundaries of personal space had never really registered with her, growing up the way she had, and now that she had the touch needs of a shifter, she went around clinging to all of her people.

"I was actually trying to hone my supahhearing, before I was so rudely interrupted." She gave him a pointed, mock-glare. "It had nothing at all to do with using it to eavesdrop on Iz. Since she's talking to the rents in the basement. They've been sort of arguing since this whole wolf thing started." And, before that. Not that the rest of them knew about it.

Iz and Rin and Mari's father was legendarily overprotective of all of his daughters, but Iz especially so. He'd raised her to be as much of a hard ass as the other two, but it didn't seem to stop him from being...him. Not even his wife could rein him in, and with everything else she had the man wrapped around her pinkie finger. It was both sad and kinda funny at the same time. But then, a lot of things about Oscar and Priya were funny. At least he thought so.

"He can't really think she's any safer back home?" he asked, the sarcasm heavy. Chicago had shit like the wolf thing happen every other week, even now. Seattle was a nice vacation from that, in his opinion.

"If she'd just stop breaking every friggen' bone in her body for a few months, get back on track with her grades, and chill out with the ridiculously headstrong about being all independent thing." She smiled to herself then, because it wasn't as though Iz was the only one who was all about I Can Take Care of Myself Thank You.

"The Real Grown Ups must think they can keep better tabs on her than Coll and Rin and Mari and the rest of the Mostly Grown Ups. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense. At least not to me." She sighed. "It would just really bite if they decided to uproot her. Who am I gunna spend all of my time with then?"

"The majority of non-family people suck." She made no apologies for that generalization. In her experience, it was true. And, besides, her family was the awesomest, even when they were being difficult, or annoying as shit. Which did happen every now and then.

"You and Kei are like butt buddies, anyways. So shut up." Rolling onto her back again, head still on his lap, and going for as casual of a tone as she could muster, "what's Mr. College Boy Doletskaya been up to lately?" She hadn't talked to Kei since he'd checked in on her right after she'd taken on infection, and she was dying just a little bit waiting to hear Jon's answer.

"Gross, Ness," Jon said crankily. "Crossing a line there. I never call you and Izz muff munchers, do I?" He called them other things, sure, but - and maybe he was a little sensitive to this because of some people in their large, convoluted family - never said anything that made it sound sexual. It creeped him out when other people did, even in jest.

Letting that go, though, he shrugged. "School, think he's gonna try to work at that wolf-owned tattoo place, or maybe he already is, I forget." It wasn't the sort of thing he kept track of. "Working his way through The Break Up." Just because Kei had seen it coming didn't mean it made it easy when it happened.

"No. Because that's weird and gross." A pause, "the other thing is kinda weird and gross too, huh? Yeah. Sorry." Vanessa happily ignored some of the less than socially acceptable behavior that went on back in Chicago, selective hearing, sight, memory, the whole bit. It was just so much easier that way.

"Skin Deep? I saw an add. Maybe he'll finally have to pierce my belly button if I'm a legal, paying customer." She'd been begging for a naval ring since she was like, twelve. But with all the supervision around, she'd never been able to convince anyone to take her. Although, there wasn't much point to it now. The hole would close with every shift.

"How is he doing with the dealing? Is this a time and space thing? Or does he need distractions?"

"Yeah, he'll have to if you're a paying customer," Jon said, but adding, "But you'll have to deal with your Dad all by yourself," he said, thinking she meant to get the permanent silver jewelry. It burned, but it stayed put. Regardless, Jon's Uncle Jake, Ness's father, still sort of scared the piss out of him. Not that he wasn't a great guy and all, but he was a large part of the reason Jon hadn't misbehaved a lot more as a kid.

As to Kei, he shrugged again. Like he knew. He and Kei, being young and male, weren't really the 'talk about boundaries and space needed' sort of people. Kei told him he and Evie were over over and Jon had shown sympathy by punching him in the shoulder. It was about as much as they'd discussed it, because they didn't need to say anything else. It was a very long conversation held in one sentence and an action and it was enough. "He hasn't really said either way," he finally said.

While Vanessa could take a blow, physical or emotional, and roll with the pain of either – just like the rest of them, self-induced, unnecessary pain wasn’t something she ever put herself through. She had enough of the other kind in her life as it was. The piercing wouldn’t ever happen, she knew that, but the rebellion-in-theory was still fun.

“What good are you if you don’t have answers for me?” She gave him a big grin, only the teeniest bit serious. She’d just drop in tomorrow and check on him, in Ness-like fashion, eliminating the chance of people making excuses was well worth the possibility of finding no one home.

“What about you, then? Anything noteworthy in the World of Temp? Job, school, girl – or girls? Gimme something.” She didn’t have enough control over her jaguar to be allowed out of the house yet, so she’d stayed cooped up with whichever of the stronger cats was available to kitty-sit for the majority of the past two weeks.

"Meh, my classes are yawntastic, but I'm doing okay enough," he told her. Academia really wasn't his thing. It belonged to others, like Evie. "No girls to speak of. Which I think it pretty stupid, who would pass up on all this?" He gestured to himself.

While the rest of the kids all seemed to have inherited model like good looks, he looked like his goofy ass dad, except for the reddish curls, those he got from his mom. But still, goofy. The girls didn't really line up, especially when he couldn't help being douchey more often than not.

"They just don't know what they're missing." She nodded, matter of factly, and patted his thigh. "And oh my God, don't even get me started on yawntastic. There's nothing to do around here. I've read like, ten books. And watched all the movies in Joshie's collection that don't have too many explosions and boobs for my liking. And everyone non-kitty, is too busy to visit."

"And when it's not yawntastic? It's barftastic. Because if it's not Rin and Coll? It's Simon and Tommy. Or Izz pining for Simon, or that Semira chick pining for that Jaguar calling vampire that Rin hates."

...to Seattle, with all its thousand contradictions. A city of silicon dreams and bloody nightmares. Ruled by a child queen with diamond-tipped fangs, occupied by artists and shapeshifters, computer programmers and ancient vampires, college students and creatures of myth. Living (and unliving) together and once the sun goes down it's...

In-character content, help files, and original plots belong to the staff and members. If you see something cool you'd like to play with, ask. Given that we're using somebody else's mythos, it'd be pretty lame if we refused to share.